Research indicates that the 'mental illness is an illness like any other' approach to destigmatisation has failed to improve attitudes. This study replicated, with 469 New Zealanders, previous findings that the public tends to reject biological and genetic explanations of mental health problems in favour of psychosocial explanations focused on negative life events. It also confirmed previous findings (contrary to the assumption on which most destigmatisation programmes are based)that biological and genetic causal beliefs are related to negative attitudes, including perceptions that 'mental patients' are dangerous, antisocial and unpredictable, and reluctance to become romantically involved with them. The amount of reported personal contact with people who had received psychiatric treatment was correlated with positive attitudes. It is recommended that destigmatisation programmes consider abandoning efforts to promulgate illness-based explanations and focus instead on increasing contact with and exposure to users of mental health services.

The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) has for some time now enjoyed fame (or even notoriety). Indeed, Health Education Research has been pleased to publish a number of articles over recent years. We were especially pleased to publish Adams and White's ( Adams and White, 2004) interesting and arguably heretical paper which appears in this edition of the Journal (and was published in advance on our website). We felt this would be an excellent opportunity to repeat our recent venture in which we invited a Commentary Group of distinguished researchers to react to three articles on the European Smoking Prevention Framework Approach in Health Education Research, 18(6), 664–677 (2003). Accordingly, we invited six equally distinguished commentators to provide a critical review of the TTM.